


songs after dark

by walksbyherself



Category: Never Let Me Go - All Media Types, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 03:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1330867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walksbyherself/pseuds/walksbyherself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My name is Stiles but this story isn’t about me, it’s about Derek H.</p>
<p>(a Never Let Me Go AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	songs after dark

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by the novel and film [Never Let Me Go](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_%28novel%29), but is mostly the fault of [this tumblr post](http://the1001cranes.tumblr.com/post/63530634644/alltruthwaitsinallthings-why-am-i-friends-with) by [1001cranes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes).

My name is Stiles but this story isn’t about me, it’s about Derek H.

I didn’t know Derek at Halesham--for obvious reasons--so I had to rely on stories the others told me, but I think that part is important if you’re going to understand what came later.

The headmistress at Halesham was Madame Victoria. She was a beautiful but severe woman with close-cropped red hair and suits with creases sharp enough to cut. She was never openly unkind, but more than a little distant; outside of school assemblies, most students had never heard her say more than a handful of words to them.

The other teachers were friendlier. Most of them taught subjects that you’d find in any other school--math, literature, art--but two were different. Miss Marin’s class covered life after graduation from Halesham: donations and recovery centers, carers, and the rest of the human world. The other unique class was taught by Talia.

Talia was the only adult werewolf the students knew. She taught them about their strength and how to control it, so as not to harm any of the human staff or carers they were going to come in contact with. Her most important lesson was their anchor. In times of fear or stress--everyone knew she meant the donations, though she tended to avoid the word--it might become difficult for them to control their wolf nature. Their anchor would help set their emotions back in order, keeping themselves and their care staff safe.

The anchor was the same for every student. If they were in crisis, they were to think about their duty. Their responsibility to save lives should comfort them. They knew what they were here to do; everything else would take care of itself. 

A rumor floated around that there had been a time when everyone chose their own anchors. But wouldn’t that be confusing, the students wondered, not knowing what to remind someone of to help them if they started to lose control? And what if you chose poorly? It was too ridiculous.

The rumor died out quickly.

 

There wasn’t really a formal graduation ceremony at Halesham. In the spring, the Senior students packed up their trunks and were sent out to one of the Residences. Ours was called the Cottages and before the county donated it to the program, it had been part of a farm.

The van from Beacon Hill had dropped us off about an hour before the one from Halesham arrived.

There were four of us--Allison, Danny, Lydia, and me--wandering around the main house when we heard the crunch of tires on the gravel outside. We went out onto the front steps in time to see the second van pull up. The werewolves piled out, a crush of laughing and teasing and tangled limbs shoving that drew up short when they saw us standing there.

“Hey,” Scott said.

“Hey,” I said.

Scott smiled at Allison. Isaac slipped his hand into Scott’s. Lydia and Danny leaned closer to each other, sizing up Jackson. Erica whispered something to Boyd, and Derek kept his head down at the back of the group, scratching behind his ear. This is how we met.

 

There were two older girls already at the Cottages, but Laura and Julia were getting ready to leave for carer training and only had a week to show us the ropes. Thankfully, there wasn’t much to learn. We were all free to pick our own rooms; Lydia, Danny, Erica and Boyd ended up in the farm house across the courtyard, which left the rest of the werewolves with Allison and me in the main house. The caretaker, who insisted on being called “Coach,” delivered groceries once a week and would drive us to town until we got licenses of our own. 

Ostensibly, we were all to be working on research projects we had picked out before leaving our schools; something to keep our minds busy until we got started as carers or donors. Laura and Julia broke the news to us our first night at dinner that the projects were just busy work. No one was ever going to collect them or grade them or even ask about them. We were free to do whatever we wanted.

I kept up with mine diligently for the first few weeks, before letting it turn into something I picked at only on rainy days. Lydia, naturally, finished hers. All of us put in some effort, except Derek. He never even started his. The only thing I saw him work on was his art.

 

One morning at breakfast, Isaac made a joke about the gallery. Scott and Erica and Boyd all laughed; even Derek smiled, glancing up from his toast and eggs.

“What’s the gallery?” Allison asked and all five of them went silent. Derek looked a little pale.

Boyd was the one who at last spoke up. “You had art classes, right?” 

When we nodded, he continued. “Every month or so, Miss Marin used round up everything we’d done lately and take it into one of the rec rooms. She’d arrange everything, then Madame would come in and look it all over. She’d take her time, and eventually pick out a handful of pieces and take them away.”

“We never found out what it was for,” Isaac added. “But there was a rumor that got passed down from the older students. They said there was a gallery, a place where people could see our art and they’d realize what a good school Halesham was.”

“You must have gotten loads of things in the gallery,” I said to Derek.

The Halesham students were silent again.

“I mean,” I continued, “you’re always working on pieces, I thought…” I crammed pancakes in my mouth to keep myself from saying anything else.

“I did alright,” Derek said, shrugging one shoulder. “There were a lot of us to choose from; Madame didn’t...couldn’t take too many from just one of us. It wouldn’t have been fair.”

Erica rolled her eyes. “Madame didn’t like touching anything of ours more than she had to.”

“Hey!” Derek sat up straighter, startled and affronted on Madame’s behalf.

Erica frowned. “Derek, she was creeped out by us. Didn’t you notice?”

Derek shook his head, turning back to his breakfast. The conversation moved on.

That afternoon, Derek and I were up on the roster to make lunch. I started digging ingredients out of the pantry, expecting any moment for him to appear beside me, quietly jumping in to help like he had every time before. When I had everything lined up on the counter and Derek still hadn’t arrived, I went looking for him.

I found him in the barn, up in the hayloft. At first I thought he might be sketching, but as I got closer, I could see his hands were empty. He was sitting on a hay bale, looking out the open door into the fields. 

I could only keep up the silence for a few minutes before I asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“What Erica said. It wasn’t like that.” Derek frowned, searching for the words. “Madame was...careful with us, but we were still learning. It doesn’t mean she didn’t love us.”

I scuffed one foot through the straw. “Some people are just bad at showing they care,” I said. “Maybe she was nervous for you all, for your donations.

It wasn’t really a lie, just a guess I didn’t believe in, so I hoped he would let it pass.

“Maybe that was it,” Derek agreed, and we climbed down out of the loft.

 

When Boyd and Erica got their notices on the same day, we thought it was a sign. Everyone was sure they’d be leaving the Cottages to sign on the dotted line of a deferral (or however it worked) and go cruising around the country until their carers called them home months later. It seemed like something we should be celebrating.

The party started at lunch. Jackson had managed to purchase two bottles of wine on our last trip to town and smuggled them back to the house; we drank very small toasts to make it last longer. After Coach came for Erica and Boyd around four o’clock, the rest of us kept on without them.

By evening, everyone was relaxed. Lydia was sprawled on the couch in the living room, her feet in Jackson’s lap. Danny sat on Jackson’s other side, dragging his fingers through his hair. Isaac, Scott, and Allison stumbled upstairs, giggling. A bedroom door opened, then shut.

I was alone in the kitchen. I drank the last of the wine straight from the bottle and wondered where Derek had gone. It had been dark for hours, so it was doubtful he was wandering the property. I made my way upstairs to his room. The door was shut, as always, so I knocked.

“Yes?”

“It’s me,” I said. “Are you...Can I come in?”

There was a long pause. “Sure,” he said at last. 

When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was Erica. Her portrait was painted on the wall opposite, complete with her wide, fearless smile. Derek held a brush, still tipped in the gold of her hair. He might have said something to me then, but I was too busy looking around, pushing the door shut behind me as I turned in a slow circle. 

The walls were covered with art: more portraits wedged in beside abstract and impressionist blobs of color, everything leading to a huge landscape over his bed that had to be Halesham.

“You’ve been holding out on me,” I said, transfixed by the constellations he’d added to the ceiling. 

Derek ducked his head, just like he had on the day we met. “I wasn’t sure if all this was allowed.”

“Didn’t stop you much,” I teased.

“I want to finish it,” he added, “before I go.”

I made a soft, affirmative noise. “We’ll all be leaving soon.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Derek flinch. He turned away as though to tidy up, but he just kept moving the same handful of things from one side of his desk to the other.

Maybe it was the wine that made me brave. I asked, “Will you draw me once before we go?”

“What?” Derek startled, dropped a paintbrush that splattered green on the floor.

“I’m not complaining,” I said, flopping down to sit on the bed. “I’ve seen you draw everyone else since we’ve been here but never me and it’s...I just wondered.” 

Derek stared at me for a long time, hands twitching a little at his sides. I was ready to take it back, tell him to forget about it, when he pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk, digging beneath watercolor paper and stubs of crayons until he fished out a notebook. He held it out to me gingerly, like a bomb he expected to go off.

My face was on the first page. And the second. And the third. The early sketches coincided with our arrival at the Cottages; my hair was shorter then. Later pages were crammed with fragments--only my hands or part of my face--but all of it was me.

“You…” I looked up. 

Derek stood in front of me, hands folded and shoulders hunched like he expected to be scolded. 

“ _Why_?” I pleaded, unsure exactly which question I was asking.

“I like you.” He said it like a secret. “I liked you from the start, but I didn’t think you’d want to rush into anything and then it just...I got used to keeping quiet. When you never paired off with anyone, I thought maybe you didn’t…” He made a helpless gesture that was probably supposed to encompass casual sex and romance and everything in between. “Didn’t,” he repeated.

“Nobody asked,” I said. “And if they had I would have said I was waiting on you.”

I watched the words sink in, watched the tension in him turn into a different kind of energy. I surged to my feet. I only managed to take two steps before he lifted me up into a kiss. I curled my arms around the back of his neck, fingers sliding through his hair as I tried to pull myself closer. Our teeth clacked together and we broke apart laughing. 

“C’mon,” I said. 

“I know, I know,” he replied, mouth dragging over my neck. “You’ve been waiting.”

He carried me back to the bed.

The next morning, I moved all my things into Derek’s room.

 

After that, notices started arriving almost once a month. Danny was next to go, leaving Lydia and Jackson prickly in his absence. Lydia filled out the carer training forms after a particularly memorable screaming match; just to get out of the house, she said.

Scott was next, then Allison. Jackson and Isaac started sleeping in the living room rather than either of their bedrooms, before they left within three days of each other. And then only Derek and I were left.

We lay in bed for hours that first morning alone, ears straining for the sound of someone else moving in the house. Neither of us wanted to leave but now the thought of continuing to wait--with the house silent and foreign seeming--was impossible. 

“I want to defer,” Derek said. “I think...Do you think we could? I think we could.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think we could get a whole year.”

I thought about this moment later, sitting in Madame Victoria’s living room, and wished I had just kept my big mouth shut.

 

Madame Victoria’s house was a charming, slender two-story in a row between a dozen other charming, slender two-story homes. It had taken us two weeks to work up the nerve to go, followed by three nervous hours to get there and an awkward lunch where we tried to talk about everything but where we were going and what it could mean. And then we arrived. Derek rang the bell. I took his hand.

Madame Victoria answered the door a moment later. “Derek,” she said, almost smiling. “And who is your friend?”

“Stiles, ma’am,” I said.

“A pleasure,” she replied. “Why don’t you two come in?”

It wasn’t until she’d shown us to seats in her living room and offered us something to drink that she asked why we’d come. 

“We’d like to defer,” Derek said. “To put off our donations--just for a little while. As long as you think we deserve.”

“As long as we’ve _earned_ ,” I said, squeezing Derek’s hand.

“I see.” Madame leaned back in her chair. “And how might you have earned this?”

“Love.” Derek flushed to the tips of his ears, but he barrelled on. “We’ve heard that couples who...who are in love can defer their donations. We understand that you can’t just take our word for it. If there are forms or interviews or tests--whatever we have to do, we’ll do it. We just want…” Derek paused, turned to smile at me. “We just want time.”

“Of course,” Madame Victoria said, her voice gone tight. She sipped at her tea. “Do you know what kind of test you will have to pass?”

“No,” Derek said. “But we aren’t afraid.”

“I know you aren’t, my dear.” Madame set her cup down. The remains of her smile faded.

I had always prided myself on figuring things out, but Derek understood first. 

“There is no deferral,” he said. His fingers slid through mine and away.

“No,” said Madame. “And there never was. It is the one rumor we have never been able to eradicate. Denial and silence have proven equally unable to dispel the myth. I see couples like you every few months.” She made a soft sound like a sigh. “You have my apologies.”

“Your _apologies_ \--” I stood up, already leaning into the fight, but Derek stood with me.

“We’ve taken up enough of your time, ma’am.” He caught me by the elbow. “Thank you for seeing us.”

We were almost to the door, when Derek glanced back. “I have one last question,” he said and my stomach sank.

“Stiles went to Beacon Hill.” I dug my fingers into Derek’s arm; he wouldn’t look at me. “They didn’t have a gallery there. Why not?”

Madame looked older than she had when we arrived; her lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “Because,” she said, “there was never any question if the human donors had souls.”

I was finding it hard to breathe. Derek only nodded. “We’ll be on our way, then. Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

“Goodbye, my dear.” 

I choked something out. Derek led me down the front steps. I thought I might throw up on Madame’s neatly swept walkway, but he kept me moving. He popped the trunk on the jeep and had me sit on the tailgate until my breathing was finally, finally even.

“Do you want me to drive?” he asked. 

“No,” I said. I needed something to do with my hands, or I knew they would start to shake.

We drove home in silence. Focusing on the car and the route meant there was no space in my mind for anything else. We were a mile from home when I finally heard Derek’s voice.

“Stop the car, please.”

No one used this road except going to and from the Cottages, so I put the car in park right where we were. Derek unfastened his seatbelt and got calmly out. He walked around the front of the car, a silhouette in the headlights, only going a few yards before stumbling to a halt. His shoulders drew up slowly, his hands curling into fists.

His scream cut through the night and the car and me. 

I tried to go to him; I had opened the door and was struggling with my seatbelt when the tears hit. I’d cried before--scraped knees and sad films and the day Lydia left--but this was something else. I screamed and tasted salt. 

Derek howled. I jerked at the seatbelt latch again, tumbling out into dirt and skinning my palms. I scrambled to reach him, hooking an arm around his waist and falling against him with a wet gasp. I could feel Derek’s fingers pressing bruises into my back and shoulders and I didn’t care. We emptied our lungs with yelling, two madmen on a country road. Our teachers would not have known us.

By the time we both calmed down, the skin around my eyes felt tight and feverish. Derek was stroking a hand through my hair; I kept expecting to feel the prick of claws, but he had his wolf under perfect control. 

“We’ll be okay,” Derek whispered. “We will, I promise. Let’s go home.”

 

I never saw the letter, I can only guess that it came shortly after our visit to Madame Victoria and he hid it from me. There was just the morning that I woke up alone and I knew something was wrong. The box with Derek’s art supplies was gone from the dresser. There was a note on the kitchen table addressed to me, propped against the bowl of oranges. 

I filled out the forms for carer training that afternoon.

 

By the time I caught up to Derek, it was just before his third donation. Before that, there was training and the supervisory period and then finally my own solo assignments as a carer. I had probably worked with a dozen different donors, some of them more than once, when I finally saw his name come up on the list.

The evaluators had done nothing but praise my work, but I was still nervous when I put in my request to care for Derek. When they did give me permission, it was with caveats. Derek hadn’t responded well to his two previous carers. They hoped that granting my request would produce better results.

I drove to his recovery center on a Tuesday. I checked in at the front desk, where they gave me a copy Derek’s file with a summary of his donations thus far and notes from the other carers. I had to keep myself from grinning like an idiot all the way to his room.

He was sitting up in bed, sketchbook open on his lap. I stood in the doorway for a minute longer and then he looked up. I could tell by his expression they hadn’t told him who was coming.

“Hey there, stranger,” I said.

The pencil and book slipped from his hands. His eyes flickered between hazel and gold as he dug growing claws into the blanket over his lap. It was the first time I had ever seen him lose control.

“Shit, _Derek_.” I dropped my bag and hurried over to the bed. As soon as I was close enough, Derek grabbed me, pulling me to sit beside him and pressing his face to the hollow beneath my ear. “Derek, listen to me. Remember your anchor, your--”

“It’s you.” Derek’s voice was hoarse and barely audible, but I heard every word. “It’s been you for years.”

Fear hit me like cold water. Werewolf donors didn’t change their anchors. I hadn’t even known they _could_. If he said that where someone on the staff could hear him, I had no idea what the consequences might be.

He must have heard my heartrate speed up, because Derek whined and relaxed his grip.

“I won’t say it again,” he murmured, dragging one hand slowly between my shoulder blades. “But I wanted you to hear it. Just once.”

“Okay,” I said, slumping wearily against him. All the energy I arrived with had evaporated.

Derek leaned back against the pillows, tugging me along with him. I slung my legs up onto the bed. It was so much narrower than his bed at the Cottages; we had to negotiate the space more carefully. I ended up curled on my side, sprawled halfway over Derek.

Derek’s eyes soon drifted halfway shut, already on the verge of a nap. I didn’t take it personally; this close to a donation, he needed to save his strength for the procedure. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

“Me too,” I whispered.

It wasn’t the reunion I had hoped for, but it was far, far better than none.

 

Derek made such a speedy recovery from his fourth donation that I was assigned to him full-time. What that meant in practical terms was that I spent every day with him. At first, it was mostly keeping him from going stir-crazy and working through the therapy regimen. As he grew stronger, we got authorizations for day trips, even an occasional weekend at my apartment. We used to pretend that we were living the lives our possibles had, that they were living like us; doing laundry and burning dinner and and falling asleep on the couch, curled up in each other. We pretended they’d be jealous of us.

From the fifth donation on, it became a pattern, only with steadily more time spent on therapy and fewer days outside the recovery center. I brought him art supplies and he made pictures enough to cover the walls of his room. It brightened the space up, which both of us appreciated as we spent more and more of my visits without leaving it.

We were in love. Even on the bad days, it was perfect. 

I don’t know what more you want me to say.

 

Tomorrow is Derek’s seventh donation.

He has done exceptionally well; the doctors all tell him how proud they are. Seven is the standard for werewolves--or at least, the hope--but just like with human donors, they sometimes complete early. Not Derek.

He doesn’t get out of bed much lately; I tease him, accuse him of laziness until he laughs as hard as he can without pulling a stitch. (His healing has slowed substantially since his fourth donation. They warned us about it in training, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.)

I try to keep his spirits up and most days I succeed. Sometimes I’ll tell him what gossip I’ve heard about the others: how Allison came through her first donation with flying colors, or how well Isaac is doing as a carer. Sometimes we sit quietly; I’ll read to myself while he sketches in his notebook. Derek has been writing as much as drawing lately; he admitted it’s for me but he won’t let me read it. There will be time for that after tomorrow, I guess.

I haven’t received my official letter yet, but the hints from the staff are thick on the ground. After Derek completes, I’ll start my donations.

If I had found out just a few weeks ago, I would have fallen apart--crying in the middle of the hall, kicking and screaming onto my way to the procedure room, acting like that donor everyone claims to have heard of but never seen. 

Today, though, I look at him sleeping, at the shadows beneath his eyes. He’s ready. As much as it hurts, as much as it _will_ hurt, I have to let him go.

Tomorrow, I will be ready.


End file.
